The Death of Restraint
Chapter 2
"Bad things" do happen. And, just like their namesake, they're not good to deal with. Or easy. Not in any means. But it takes a lot of will, strength, and yes, even help, to recover.
The beeping of a monitor droned endlessly, and when the patient laying in the hospital bed woke up, that was all he could hear. His eyes were hard to open, and he winced. He reached his hand to his said, and felt the pain when his hand made contact.
Oh right, he had been stabbed.
Akabane Karma struggled to sit up, and groggily rubbed at his eyes. His face remained passive. But internally, he was sobbing and screaming. He was surprised the heart monitor wasn't picking up his distress, it wasn't increasing its dull sounds. But, then again, he was skilled at hiding his emotions.
He had been stabbed.
He attempted to recollect the events of the previous afternoon (or what he assumed was the previous day), but his mind seemed to be rejecting his request for memories. He recalled being stabbed, the sharp pain slicing at his torso, it was made obvious by the current pain and bandages that were on the wound.
But he could not recall the shadowy figure that was to blame for Karma's physical pain. His brain was shutting off those memories. He wondered why.
He heard the click of a door opening, and tilted his face towards the sound. A nurse had walked in, holding a clipboard. She smiled at him, saccharin sweet, and readied her pen to write on her clipboard.
"Hello, I am Nurse Sato, how are you feeling?" Her false smile remained perfectly plastered on her face the whole time she spoke. Karma knew how easy it was to chip that painted grin. But he figured it wouldn't do him any good to act up while under her care.
"How did I get here?" He decided to answer her question with one of his own that was bugging him.
"Your friend called an ambulance and you were rushed to the nearest hospital, which happened to be this one." She answered politely.
"What friend?" His brain wasn't quite adequate as of yet, and he was annoyed that he could not even remember who it was that had called.
"He left a little while ago, his mother wanted him home or something. Or at least I think he was a boy. He looked kind of girlish. Blue pigtails. He was wearing a school uniform, a boys' uniform, so I assumed he was one." She seemed to have just been rambling, but Karma had heard enough.
So Nagisa had come.
How come he couldn't remembered his friend being there for him? And why had he needed to be there again? Oh right, he'd been stabbed. By who?
The frustrated tornado of questions spun in his skull.
"Your heart rate is normal, blood pressure and breathing rate are good too." She continued to check on him until she affirmed his being healthy. Well, except for the knife wound. And his face, which was still bruised and a bit sore.
"You'd be able to be released, but no one has, uh, come to see you other than your blue-haired friend." Makes sense. His parents weren't around. "We called your mother, and your father, but neither picked up." Her eyebrows furrowed in what looked like frustration. She mumbled something about bad parenting, and then her fake smile returned.
"Well anyways, you need a legal guardian to sign your release as a minor. I'm sure they'll come soon." Karma doubted that statement.
The nurse left the room, and Karma was left by himself to struggle to remember the events that had led to him being stabbed.
Meanwhile, Nagisa was skipping class in favor of sitting in his room. His face was buried in his hands, covering his horrified expression. Ever since he had awoken in a hospital chair, his mind had been torturing him. He had swiftly left the hospital after seeing the missed calls and messages from his mother asking where he was. She had been angry that he hadn't come home the previous evening, but had let it go when he explained that his friend had been hurt. He had failed to explain what had happened to the attacker.
But he knew. He still felt the knife in his hand, not the flexible anti-Koro-sensei knives he practiced with in school, but a real one. One that could hurt a human. And it had. What had happened to stop that man? He had been killed too easily. How had he gotten Karma?
Then his mind caught up with his thoughts. A spasm tore through his body and he clamped his hands to his mouth, but the retching wouldn't stop. He rolled off of his bed onto his knees and vomited all over the floor. He continued to gag, and the smell of the bile he had thrown up hit his nose, increasing his heaving even more. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks and a strangled shout was ripped from his throat.
The blood on his hands was no longer visible, after having been scrubbed off tenfold, but it remained.
Nagisa had killed a man, and he was paying for it with his soul.
Karma was laying in his hospital bed, disregarding the tray of "food" that had been delivered to him earlier.
The torture of regaining memory raged on, and Karma decided to just ask someone what had happened.
He just needed to find someone that he could ask.
As of yet, no one had come to either visit or take him out of the hospital. Karma was getting bored with his own thoughts, or lack of, and staring at the blank white walls did nothing to cure his boredom.
He sighed heavily and bent his head back. Where was Nagisa? Was he at school? Karma realized he could text his friend… but he didn't know where his phone was.
He sat up and swung his legs off of the white bed. His bare feet skimmed the floor. Leaning into the cold ground, he stood up. His hospital gown brushed his leg.
He walked to the door and opened it. He peeked his head outside, searching for his nurse, when he saw a familiar face. His mother was having a conversation with a doctor. She looked angry. Her head turned and her eyes locked with Karma's. She stared for a minute, then blinked. She strode towards him, professional as always, and took in the sight of him.
He had fully opened the door, and was being scrutinized by his mother. She, like him, was talented in being emotionless.
But her calm demeanor slipped when she suddenly took him into her arms. It was brief, and seconds later she had removed her arms from around him, but they hadn't hugged in such a long time. It felt nice.
"We've come to take you out." She informed him curtly. Footsteps tapped in the hallway, and Karma's father appeared, holding a bag. Upon seeing his wife and son, he headed over.
"Here are some clothes. Be quick changing, your mother and I do have to return to work and you to class. Eventually" He handed Karma the bag. He took it, and nodded thanks. He turned to head back into the room when his father stopped him. His father looked older.
"We're glad you're okay, son." There were no smiles, but it meant the world to Karma.
After changing into normal clothes, he looked around the hospital room for any personal belongings. Where was his phone?
He walked out of the plain room and looked around for his parents. His mother was on the phone. When he walked to her, she handed him his. He let her finish her conversation, assuming that it was work related, and unlocked his own phone. There were three unchecked messages from Nagisa.
Yesterday:
Nagisa: Are you okay?
Nagisa: Karma, answer me.
Nagisa: I'm getting worried, tell me you're alright. Please.
He thought that thanking Nagisa through text wasn't good enough, so he decided to tell him at school the following day.
Later, Karma's parents had left on business trips again, and he was alone. Karma felt uneasy at being by himself. Would someone else attack him? Who would save him next? His thoughts made him feel queasy and he felt his pulse. His heart was racing. Akabane Karma was scared.
He slept downstairs that night. He had brought a knife with him. At first, he had hesitated seeing the weapon, but then annoyance had flooded through him and he warned himself to not be cowardly. So he slept with a knife clutched in his right hand.
If an outsider were to see him sleep, they would have been concerned by the sheen of sweat covering his body and the ragged breaths he took during his nightmare.
Karma woke up from his plagued dreams feeling sticky. He checked his phone for the time. School would start in about half an hour. He begrudgingly got up and went through his daily routine. Unease still prodded at him, but he pushed it aside.
When he finally reached Class E perched on a mountain, he was nearly an hour late. He walked into his class as confidently as he could, and interrupted a teaching session from Koro-sensei.
"Hey there, octopus. Miss me?" Heads turned so fast in his direction it resembled a scene from a manga.
"Karma, so glad you could join us after two days." Karma wondered why Koro-sensei made no remark of him being late that day.
His classmates surrounded him, asking if he was okay. The only person he couldn't find was the only one he wanted to.
"Where's Nagisa?" His question hung in the air for a moment. The students had quieted.
Sugino spoke up first. "He hasn't been to school. He didn't answer my texts, either."
"Or mine or Kayano's." Nakamura added.
"We're worried about him. We went to his house, but his mother told us to go away." Kayano continued.
Expressions around the room varied from nonchalant to worried to angry. They all cared for Nagisa, and the fact that he had been gone from school, hadn't been answering his texts, and his mother hadn't claimed illness of any sort made them all very worried.
What had happened to Shiota Nagisa?
He was lying in a pool of his own vomit. His eyes were empty. He had long since stopped crying. He didn't deserve to cry.
His mother had walked in on the sight, and, instead of trying to help her son, she simply walked out, too disturbed to offer comfort. It was a decision she'd live to regret.
"Nagisa, honey, I'm going to the store." Shiota Hiromi shouted to her daughter. She was troubled. Her daughter was clearly feeling down. Maybe some good food would cheer her up. Hiromi's glassy eyes mustered up images of her little girl smiling.
It was maybe an hour after his mother had left when Nagisa finally raised himself from his floor. Stiffly he walked to the bathroom to clean himself up. His reflection was unrecognizable. The skin under his eyes was swollen, red and puffy. Tear tracks ran vertically across his face. His lips were dry and chapped. His hair had come out of the pigtails and was knotted and slightly frayed. His already pale skin now looked ghostly.
Nagisa looked away from the mirror and proceeded to deal with his appearance. Then he changed from his vomit-stained clothes into something clean.
He walked down the stairs to the main level of his home. The sound of the television pulled him in and he reached for the remote to turn it off when he saw what was playing. It was a news station.
"…about a recent stabbing. Akabane Karma, a middle schooler at Kunugigaoka Junior High School was stabbed by a man named Inoue Akihiro. Inoue was confirmed deceased at the scene of the crime. Officials have yet to report the cause of death.
Inoue worked at a local grocery shop, and was married with two children. Their names aren't being released to the public, but they did an interview with our on-scene reporter."
The camera cut to two little girls hanging onto a woman. All three looked as if they had been crying. The microphone was held to the littler of the two girls.
"My mommy says- says that d-daddy did a b-bad thing. M-maybe he d-did but why did he have to die?" The girl wailed. Her tears refreshed and the camera was hurriedly refocused on the newscaster.
"We'll have more on this story later…" But Nagisa had stopped listening. His hands clutched his stomach and curled over, pressing his forehead into the floor.
A horrendous fog clouded his mind as, once again, Nagisa screamed in agony.
Why did he have to die?